No progress for a week or so

Well, there will be very little to no progress on my end for the next week or so. My step-brother just got home from Russian and I haven't seen him for about 2 years, so I'm going to be spending some time hanging out with him.

Except for tomorrow; tomorrow I'm going to see X-Men 3 with my other brother. That'll only be for a couple hours though, then its back to here.

Anyway, my current tasks are sprucing up the map editor for Project2 (I'll be so glad when we announce the name) and my secret uber-project, dubbed Project Asrion. As I said previously I've got states implemented in it, now I just need to code some test to make sure I have everything that they'll need (it seems that I had figured something out that was wrong with them and then fell asleep =/.) I'm also implementing a key-mapping feature into dftInput. I'm hoping that come the time my brother leaves I'll have the map-editor done and a little demo for Project Asrion done (by little, I mean LITTLE demo.)

On a side note I bought the Tron 2.0 game for the PC today and I have to say its pretty horrible. It looks beautiful and runs pretty good (most of the time), but that doesn't make up for the horrible gameplay. Here is a list of pros and cons I had about it:

Throwing a disc at someone is NOT fun.

Lame/cliche computer names are not cool/entertaining. They're lame and makes it seem like you're not very creative. Kernel for Coronel != cool.

A 5-foot drop wouldn't kill a 7 year old, why does it kill a 30 something computer enhanced person?

Awesome sniper rifle with some really nice upgrades.

Item system is awesome

Cliche problems - I need 3 pieces of data and look there are exactly 3 archives, each containing one piece. Why not add a 4th or 5th to throw in the extra waiting and maybe some baddies to fight while waiting?

Putting an infinite energy node next to a box that contains items that each cost around all of my energy is dumb. I know there are people out there that like to be able to get every single item, but IMO part of the fun is having to choose between A and B. I can get the sniper rifle and be able to take the baddies out from afar and without notice, or I can have some fun and run in with this huge gattling gun [evil]. It also enforces the tactic of paying attention to your surrounding. A sniper rifle on a train level isn't going to be of much help. Same goes for a rocket launcher (small area + rocket = you dying). But, a gattling gun would be a perfect idea.

The little upgrade robots are a cool idea

Nice little leveling system

And my final one (everybody needs to pay attention to this one, gamers and developers alike):GOOD/BEAUTIFUL GRAPHICS DO NOT MAKE A GOOD GAME! There's something else in the industry that has these features - beautiful graphics, high detail models and textures, special effects, and little to know interactivity/gameplay. Its called a tech-demo. A game is supposed to have GAMEPLAY, not eye candy. Yes eye candy helps, but when you spend so much time on the graphics and so little on the gameplay that your game goes from $49 to the dollar store (at $6) in a little under a few months (I'd say about 4, maybe 5), then your graphics didn't help you, huh?

All in all, the only good thing I can think of about the game is the item system (but not the items, with the exception of the sniper rifle.) So this goes under my not recommended section, with an emphasis on the not.

That is all.

Edit - and yes, I did just turn a list of pros/cons into a rant. So what!

You know those people I'm always complaining about? The ones that use IM shortcuts across their entire posts? Well here's an example - clicky.

First of all I admit I use the acronyms a lot (ROFL, LOL, AFAIK, IMO mostly), but spelling great as gr8, let me as lemme, etc is not only a bad idea (since this tends to extend into your real life writing), but (for me anyway) its actually slower. Plus, it makes your post a lot harder to read (for example, I didn't understand what he meant by "(very pop.!)" until I read it a second time.

Anyway, this kid person wants to do something that will require him spending a good chunk of his time in front of his keyboard, but he can't take the extra millisecond to spell the word 'great' correctly.

Some of you may say "He's from India, give him a break!". IMO he seems to have a well enough understanding of the English language.

Edit: Also, almost every single person I've met that spells this way, doesn't get anything accomplished because they spend too much time IMing people.

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I never really understood why they type like that on a forum. I can understand in IRC or some other "instant" chat program where speed in important, but on a forum they have all the time in the world to make their post. Hell I run most of my posts through a spell checker if I'm unsure of even one word. I used to try and help anyone regardless of how retarded they sounded, but I've pretty much given up on lazy 13 year olds.